Underhill, Craig, Sabesan, Sabe, and Zielinski, Rob (2025) Best of both worlds? Linking comprehensive and noncomprehensive cancer centers. Cancer, 131 (12). e35907.

PDF (Published Version) - Published Version Restricted to Repository staff only

Abstract

[Extract] We congratulate Thamm et al. for their systemic review and meta-analysis, which was accompanied by an editorial by Barrett et al.1, 2 The authors identified 36 observational studies that compared mostly self-designated European or US credentialed comprehensive cancer centers (CCCs) and compared them with non-CCCs. The meta-analysis indicated a 23% reduction in overall mortality risk in CCCs versus non-CCCs. Although the analysis favored CCCs compared with non-CCCs for symptom control and quality of life, issues such as equity and cost outcomes favored non-CCCs, and there was equipoise on the issues of time to delivery of care, utilization of palliative care, and overall health utilization. The study was limited by the inclusion of observational studies and was unable to robustly adjust for different populations across the studies, in particular the predominance of patients with higher socioeconomic status receiving treatment in CCCs.

Actions (Repository Staff Only)

Item Control Page